Ron Paul warns that Bundy ranch standoff isn’t over just yet

A heated land dispute between the federal government and a Nevada cattle rancher subsided over the weekend, but longtime lawmaker and former presidential hopeful Ron Paul says tensions might soon worsen once again.

An armed standoff between Cliven Bundy and the
United States Bureau of Land Management ended on Saturday with
the federal agency agreeing to release around 400 head of cattle
it had seized from the Clark County, Nevada rancher. The bureau
said Bundy owed roughly $1 million to the government because for
the last two decades he failed to pay a fee for letting his
cattle graze on federal land, but the rancher insisted that he
owed the agency nothing. Supporters soon took up arms and flocked
to the Bunch ranch to stand by in support as feds began to seize
nearly 1,000 head of cattle, but over the weekend the BLM aborted
their attempt to confiscate the animals in order avoid any
violent showdown that might have emerged.

Paul — the former Republican congressman for Texas and a
three-time contender for the office of US president — said on
Monday that things aren’t necessarily over on the Bundy ranch,
even though the feds have for now relinquished their war with the
rancher.

“They may come back with a lot more force like they did at
Waco with the Davidians,” Paul told Fox News host Neil
Cavuto on Friday, adding that he wished for a non-violent
resolution.

Only days earlier, the rancher’s wife told the Huffington Post that the mobilization of
heavily armed federal agents around her land was all too similar
to the 1993 raid on the Branch Davidians’ Waco, Texas compound
that ended with the deaths of 87 civilians.

"If you saw the artillery and their presence -- the
intimidation they are trying to put on us -- it could turn into
that," Carol Bundy said she feared.

Speaking to Paul, Cavuto claimed that the potential for violence
to erupt at the Bundy ranch on par with what occurred 20 years
ago in Texas was on a “very slight trigger,” to which
the former congressman responded, “That’s the great
fear….especially if the financial crisis gets much worse which I
anticipate.”

According to Paul, the entire incident in Clark County could have
emerged differently if the government reconsidered the way it
claimed land rights. Bundy said that the disputed property had
been in his family for nearly 150 years, but the BLM insisted
that his animals were trespassing on federal land since he
stopped paying the government a grazing fee back in the early
1990s.

"I don't believe I owe one penny to the United States
government," Bundy told Nevada’s Desert News last week.
"I don't have a contract with the United States
government."

On Friday, Paul told Cavuto that the Bundy family “had
virtual ownership of that land because they had been using
it,” yet the law is “not clean enough.”

“I think land should be in the states and I think the states
should sell it to the people,” he continued, adding that
“it’s worked out quite well in big states.”

“You need the government out of it and I think that’s the
important point, if you don’t look at that you can expect more of
these problems, especially when our economy gets into more
trouble,” the former congressman said.

In the meantime, tensions have lessened to a degree in Clark
County, where hundreds of seized cattle were handed back to the
Bundy family on Saturday, as RT reported earlier. Nevertheless, BLM spokesman
Craig Leff told the AP that his agency will work to resolve the
matter "administratively and judicially.” Neither the
BLM nor the US Department of Justice responded on Monday to
requests for comment made by the newswire, but Cliven Bundy
himself said he was going to have to inspect his returned cattle
to assess their post-confiscation condition.

"It's going to take a lot to revive the calves that were
nearly dead when they were returned to the Bundy Ranch because
they had been separated from their mothers during the roundup,
and a few most likely won't make it," Nevada Assemblywoman
Michele Fiore (R-Las Vegas) told the AP. "It's time for
Nevada to stand up to the federal government and demand the
return of the BLM lands to the people of Nevada."

For his part, Bundy said at a news conference on Monday that
"Every sheriff across the United States of America, take away
the guns from the United States bureaucrats," according to
the AP.

"Understand it is because of each and every one of you
standing here and each and every one of our Americans watching us
and protecting us with our firearms why this did not turn into
Waco massacre or a Ruby Ridge," added Fiore.